The first business of the new season is on its way at Swansea City with George Byers about to get his wish to leave the club for Sheffield Wednesday this week. And secondly, and far more importantly captain Matt Grimes is also waiting for confirmation that the club will let him move on to Fulham or Watford.
The four man team brought in to Swansea City from MK Dons has cost the swans far more than the agreed £365,000 clause to get Russell Martin’s services. With Luke Williams not far in to his contract, and Matt Gill and Dean Thornton also arriving the costs have added another £140,000 to an already stretched Swansea City budget. Steve Cooper is believed to have walked away with £120,000. Mike Marsh and Martyn Margetson although both costing far less will also receive compensation. It isn’t peanuts when all added together.
The swans have managed to pass on all loan signings available to them to date, sensibly in the interim whilst the new management team were put in place, and have added Kyle Joseph, Joel Piroe for an estimated £1,600,000 initially - and Liam Walsh coming in free, but adding another £6,000 a week to the club budget. We shouldn’t forget ex Derby County prospect Morgan Whittaker came in January for around £720,000 amd Jamal Lowe for £850,000 before last season started.
Getting to know you, Martin and Williams
It isn’t a defence of the swans we report this, it’s just the wage bill until the end of last season was £340,000 a week for all the clubs playing staff and office support, so with Ayew and the loans leaving, about £100,000 a week is freed up. We haven’t even blinked at running costs. So we wait today and potentially moving in to tomorrow for the opinion of Russell Martin on Matt Grimes future at the club. We believe Martin is flexible but will choose first his own players to replace him before talking Grimes around to a new contract at the Liberty. Those conversations we understand will happen over the coming few days, but Grimes who is another player on around £12,000 a week, and is keen to get the most from any transfer away. He is expected to be asking any new club for three times that amount.
Swansea did accept an initial bid from Fulham pending their talks with Grimes but a Covid issue in the swans squad delayed talks. Then an alleged injury to the player also held up any chance of a successful medical last week. We should say any reports of him being available for £1,500,000 are far wide of the mark. Grimes cost the club more than that when signing from Exeter City. Grimes has also worked very hard whilst at the swans, he wasn’t flavour of the month for a long while going out on loan to Northampton and Leeds to find his feet, It was only after his Leeds experience, when on his last chance as a professional at Swansea that he displayed his real quality.
That quality over the past three seasons has got him noticed hence this weeks big decision for him and his future. We believe he wants to go, the lure of a far bigger pay day elsewhere will be the final incentive, you can’t blame him. And of course Swansea City need the cash to fund the next chapter in the story for the coming season. It should get resolved this week, Grimes isn’t out there training one hundred percent, and is pretty conspicuous by his absence from recent training days and friendly games. So it all points to a move, and hopefully some more money in the kitty for Russell Martin to designate to the players he has already earmarked ( we suppose with Andy Scott ? ) to strengthen what is a very small professional squad.
It’s always nice to see players coming in and to thank players for their service, and it looks like we will get both experiences this week.
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